


Half Life

by RedTeamShark



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Amputation, Character Death, Child Death, Conscription, Family and Sibling OCs, Friend OCs, Gen, War, air raids, offscreen character deaths, original character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-08 06:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12248421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedTeamShark/pseuds/RedTeamShark
Summary: "To be a team, to be a single army, you should all get to know each other. Let’s…” Washington sighs, “let’s start with each of us sharing a fun fact about ourselves."





	Half Life

**Getting to Know You Time**

The sign is little more than a scrap of paper held in place with a piece of ragged tape, but it tells most of the story. It explains most of the reasoning for the group of five that’s in the back of the storage bunker.

“As the newest set of Lieutenants in the Chorus Army–”

“Dude. I’ve had this rank for like three years.”

“Shut up, Bitters. As the new Lieutenants of the _Chorus Army_ it’s important to get to know each other.”

Jensen raises her hand. “Agent Washington, sir? We already know each other.” She looks around the room, pointing to the other soldiers in their training clothes. “That’s Bitters, and Smith, and Palomo. And you’re Agent Washington.” Her fellow Lieutenants nod in agreement.

“That’s because everyone from the Feds didn’t show up. We can still do this exercise. To be a team, to be a single army, you should all get to know each other. Let’s…” Washington sighs, “let’s start with each of us sharing a fun fact about ourselves. I’ll go first, even. My name is Agent Washington–”

“Is your first name really Agent?” Palomo interrupts. He shrinks under Wash’s tired, but effective glare.

“Yes. My name is Agent Washington and I… used to own two cats. Your turn, Lieutenant Jensen.”

“Um, hello, everyone who I already know.” Jensen snorts a bit of a laugh. “My name is Katie Jensen, and I went to college in Armonia.”

“Aren’t you, like, sixteen? How’d you get into college in the middle of a war?” Bitters asks.

“For your information, _Antoine_ , I’m twenty-two. And I only went to college for half a semester before the war got bad and the schools were shut down in the capital. How about you share a fun fact, Mr. Know-it-all.”

Bitters shrugs, pulling his prosthetic leg up onto his flesh leg and rubbing a hand against the metal. “My name is Antoine Bitters, and my fun fact is that I still don’t have a fun fact. Smith?”

“Aw, come on,” Palomo interrupts, “you can’t use the same cop-out twice!”

“Tell you what, Palomo. When I get a fun fact, I’ll tell you first,” Bitters shoots back.

“Enough.” Wash’s voice is quiet but effective, silence falling over the room. “Something real, Lieutenant Bitters.”

“Dammit…” Bitters goes quiet, tapping his fingers against his leg, before looking around the room. “I’m only in this stupid war because the New Republic gave me a leg after the Fed’s blew mine off carpet-bombing my hometown. Smith?”

Stunned silence follows the revelation, before Smith clears his throat. “Hello, everyone. My name is John Elizabeth Andersmith and I’ve been faithfully serving the New Republic for ten years now.” The other four give him skeptical looks and Smith shrugs, a small smile crossing his boyish face. “I also have a very good moisturizing routine. Palomo, I think it’s your turn.”

“Uh. hi, everyone. My name is Charles Xavier Palomo. I have two older brothers whose names are Anthony Zachary Palomo and Benjamin Yancy Palomo–see, it’s funny ‘cause… ‘cause AZ and BY and CX…”

“Boo!” Bitters calls, holding up his hand with a thumbs down.

“…And they’re both dead…” Palomo finishes quietly, looking down at the ground and kicking his feet.

Silence falls over the room, before Wash sighs. “Well, that’s… that’s enough getting to know you time. Uh, dismissed.” He pauses as the Lieutenants get up to leave, catching Palomo’s arm gently. “Uh, Palomo? If you… want to talk or something… I, um…”

Palomo turns, a surprisingly sunny smile on his face, dimpling his cheeks that still hold some babyfat. “Nah, that’s okay. Everyone around me dies, so I’m sorta. Used to it. Haha.” The laugh is faker than a plastic flower, but Wash lets him go.

~~**Getting To Know You Time** ~~

**We Already Know Each Other Time**

Same back room. Same sign, the previous title crossed out and a new one written below it. Same five people sitting on crates and shelves, out of armor for one of the rare times that it’s safe to do so.

“I guess I got lucky,” Jensen says, leaning back on her hands and looking up at the ceiling, “I mean… I had a chance to learn, for a little while. And I had a chance to see how fucked being a pilot was on both sides. Armonia was Fed-controlled at the time and their planes were crashing just as much as the New Republic planes. There was a little group of us on campus that were all into hand radio and we got a handful of transmission codes and channels. We probably would have all been put to death for keeping them secret but… but we didn’t want to be _in_ the war, we just wanted to _know_ about the war.” She looks around the group, at Palomo who was still just a kid three years ago–is still just a kid now. At Bitters and Smith, who were already fighting in the war while she was going to school and feeling like war was nothing more than a radio drama for her entertainment after her homework was done. And at Agent Washington, who had been fighting longer than any of them, with much higher stakes.

Licking her lips, Jensen continues, “and we heard from both sides about all the plane crashes… So… so when the capital was in danger, when they closed the college, some of us ran off. Some of us joined the New Republic.” She swallows thickly. “I wanted to be a pilot, but… but luckily Castillo showed me the garage and the cars and that… that was almost as good.” She twists some loose hair around her finger, eyes on the floor again. “I _like_ cars. I’m good at fixing cars, even if I can’t drive them–”

“You do better than me,” Palomo pipes up.

“So… so it’s good. It’s good that Castillo showed me the garage and… and it’d be better if she was here with me now. She died during the… during the big battle in Armonia. Volleyball told me that she was a gunner in one of the Warthogs that tried to fall back for reinforcements and a sniper got her. Volleyball was in another Warthog, giving covering fire… Kazmi was driving Castillo and Becker was driving Volleyball and…”

“You don’t have to share anymore, Lieutenant Jensen,” Wash says, seeing her shoulders drop with relief. “I think that’s enough for today.”

~~**Getting To Know You Time** ~~

~~**We Already Know Each Other Time** ~~

**Maybe We Don’t Know Each Other Time**

“I mean… it’s pretty typical stuff.” Bitters has his prosthetic off, is rubbing the scar tissue that marks the termination of his left leg just below the knee slowly and methodically. “We were a farm town and we mostly supported the New Republic… their ideals if not their methods. I got used to the drills for bombs and the gunshots that were sometimes so close my little sister would come into my room and crawl into bed with me because… because I’d told her once that if the fighting ever came to our door, I’d protect her.” He swallows, sliding his prosthetic back into place with a series of clicks and clasps and lowering his pantleg over the joint. “Lise always believed that I’d keep her safe, you know…

“Then one day the bomb sirens went off. I was at home while everyone else was in town–or maybe it was the other way around, that whole day’s kinda fuzzy to me… anyways, they all died. I woke up in a New Republic hospital and they offered me a new leg to replace the one that the Feds had blown off. Just with the small price of fighting for them in the war. The fucking prosthetic didn’t even fit properly, it wasn’t correctly sized for my height… but I was eighteen, my hometown was rubble and burned fields, and my family was dead. What choice did I have? Go be a beggar on the streets? Even seven years ago, there were hardly any civilians left outside the capital… and the war was getting closer to Armonia every day. It wouldn’t be long before what happened to us happened to them.” He sighs, reaching up and unzipping the sleeveless hooded sweatshirt he’d changed into after taking his armor off. The tattoos that sleeve his arms are visible, but as he unzips and pulls his tank top aside, the other four get a glimpse of where that ink leads.

The word **remember** scrawls across his chest, black ink on tanned skin, the letters at the start and end fading into the designs on either of his shoulders. “It’s for Lise, mostly. All of them, but especially for my little sister who wanted to be a doctor and help people. It’s to keep me fighting, even though I never wanted anything to do with this war.”

Washington opens his mouth to dismiss them, but Smith speaks up first, pulling a picture out of his pocket. It’s battered and torn, but it’s there. He passes it around the room silently, looking at it for a long time when Palomo hands it back to him a minute later. “My kids were six and four. I got… separated from my family during a battle that moved into our town. We all had designated shelters to go to if the war got too close… places that were supposed to be neutral. Phone service was awful, of course, because everyone was trying to call their family and check on each other. I got through. Andy… Andy my older boy said that they were at home, that mommy gave him the phone and told him to play hide and seek and not come out until she found him, no matter what. He was hiding in the closet with Mason. The phone service was breaking up and…” Smith presses a hand to his eyes, rubbing slowly. “…I told them that I loved them. I told them not to come out of their hiding place until either me or their mother found them. I told Andy to hold Mason extra tight and keep him quiet because they were in a really good hiding spot and mommy and I might not find them for a really… really long time.

“Just before the call disconnected, I heard gunshots.”

Stunned silence greets them, no one quite daring to look at each other. Jensen reaches over, touches Smith’s hand gently and squeezes. Smith looks at her, offers a twitch of the lips that’s not even in shouting distance of a smile. “I got home as soon as I could, as soon as they’d let us out of the shelters. The place was ransacked… and no one was there. I don’t know what happened to them. I might never know. It’s been more than a decade… I can’t even picture them as teenagers.”

“That’s enough for today,” Wash says quietly, looking around the small room. “Everyone go.. go get some rest, okay?”

They’re all glad to leave.

~~**Getting To Know You Time** ~~

~~**We Already Know Each Other Time** ~~

~~**Maybe We Don’t Know Each Other Time** ~~

**Sad Story Hour**

The sign is at least more truthful this time. It’s also almost out of room for modifications, the three words squeezed in at the very bottom of the page.

“Okay, so, like. I don’t know what happened to Anthony. I was, like, two. I don’t remember it,” Palomo starts, licking his lips and rubbing his palms against his knees. “But Mom said he joined the New Republic and that one day she just… stopped getting letters from him. So for a while it was just the three of us, me and Ben and Mom. Dad left a long time ago, before I was born–but well I guess after he got Mom pregnant for me ‘cause that’d be weird, huh?” Palomo laughs nervously. “Anyways, yeah. One day when I was eight or nine the Federal Army of Chorus came rolling into town with… with conscriptions. They demanded a fighter from every family and they didn’t care if you were sixty or sixteen as long as you went with them to… to be cannon fodder, I guess. That was when it really looked like the New Republic might win and the Feds were desperate, I guess.”

Smith nods slightly. He’d joined up not long after the Federal conscription program started, just barely missing being forcefully signed up for that side.

“So the Feds come to our door and they… they dragged Ben away. He was screaming and crying for Mom to help him, to not let them take him… she wouldn’t let me come out of my room and she was crying too, I heard her, she told him not to fight them, to do what they wanted and come home. Then he was gone. Then a lot of people were gone.

“Later on that night she came and sat by my bed. She was crying, but I think she thought I was asleep, because she was, you know, talking to herself. She said that she couldn’t do it, that she couldn’t watch another one of her babies be dragged away for a war that none of us wanted to fight. Or maybe that was a dream… We never got any letters from Ben. But I hated the Feds for taking him away, even if he was kind of a jerk, and I wanted to… to go rescue him.”

Palomo looks around, his gaze fleeting on each person in the room. “I wanted to rescue him, I did. I didn’t know it was him when I… when we were fighting in Armonia…  Not until after…”

“Palomo?” Bitters reaches over, touches his shoulder lightly. Palomo is crying.

“I shot my own brother,” he chokes out, pulling his knees up and wrapping his arms around them. “I promised that I’d bring him home and I _k-k-killed him!_ ”

Bitters wraps his arms around Palomo, rocks him gently. After a moment, Jensen joins them, sitting on Palomo’s other side and stroking his hair. Smith steps over, wraps his arms around all three of them and shushes them gently.

“…Maybe that’s enough getting to know each other…” Wash whispers, getting up and leaving the room quietly.


End file.
